• Question: About 1 million years later, is sun going to be more close to us or it's going to be more away ?

    Asked by smiltesmoosh to Charlotte, Colin, Becki, Rick on 26 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Rebecca Scott

      Rebecca Scott answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      I guess since the universe is expanding, that we will slowly move further away from the sun…although the gravity of the sun and the planets and things keeps us all in a set orbit….I don’t really know! Eventually (billions of years) the sun will burn out like other stars do and then we’ll definitely have problems…

    • Photo: Colin Swift

      Colin Swift answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      In abi=out 5 Billion years the sun will most likely start behaving in a different way – this will cause it to expand and it could grow to a very large size – encompassing the orbit of earthor eveen Mars…. that’s 5 billion years away thiough – I wouldn’t worry about if I were you.
      The earths orbit is not quite a perfect sphere – in fact the sun is closest to the earth in January – but we in the northern hemisphere are tilted away from the sun so its colder for us and our days are shorter (hot in the southern hemisphere).
      I don’t think in the short term we have to worry about it. Oh and it takes light approximately 8 minutes to get to us from the sun – o we are seeingg the sun as it was 8 minutes ago!

    • Photo: Charlotte Dalton

      Charlotte Dalton answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      probably pretty much the same, it will be a few billion years until the sun becomes a red giant and swallows all the planets up to mars (then we will be really close to the sun lol)

    • Photo: Rick Smith

      Rick Smith answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      I agree, in terms of planets and stars a million years is nothing. If you want to see big changes in astronomy you really have to look at many many millions of years or billions of years.

      Modern humans are only about a few hundred thousands of years old and the earth is 4.5 billion years old. If the earths lifetime was represented by one year, then modern humans have only existed for the equivalent of about 25 minutes!

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